Phil Dunn was one of the red shirt-wearing attendees of the annual Terry Fox Run Sunday.

He walked the path at Jubilee Park in Spruce Grove and immersed himself in the community of those who fight cancer, have been touched by it indirectly or survived or live with a case of it in their own right. He belongs to the living community and received his chronic myeloid leukemia diagnosis two years ago.

The journey to the peace Dunn feels now started out scary and slowly stopped seeming so over time.

“In less than 48 hours I was sent for tests and on medication,” he said. “It was concerning to hear the ‘c’ word at first, but the doctors have been right on everything. Treatments have been very effective.”

Chronic myeloid leukemia is a cancer that begins in the white blood cells of the body. It causes increased myeloid cell growth in bone marrow and previously had a three-to-five-year life expectancy on average. With the advent of new medicine it has become a condition many afflicted with no longer see as a death sentence.

“I have never been given a limitation,” Dunn, 65, said. “It is my understanding I will die of something else.”

Apart from less energy, Dunn is the same person he’s always been, but with a disease forever a part of his body. He takes an oral chemotherapy pill each day. He says his case is less severe than others, but like more severe cancer patients, does not mind attention if it brings hope and resolve to those less fortunate.

“I do not look for it, but I am ok with it if it brings people determination to deal with cancer,” he said.

Through his life he has seen neighbours and relatives die of the disease. Both of his parents and all of his grandparents died from forms of it. Above all, he wants Canadians to know it effects everyone somehow.

“It hurts so many people,” Dunn said.

He will continue on with life, coping with his disease and being there to lift up others in the same boat. All the while, wife Cathy is looking on with pride at how he has not let something unnerving keep him down.

“He has an amazing ability to keep going,” she said.

The Terry Fox Run raised just under $17,000 and had 317 participants including Dunn. Organizer Rebecca Marsh said the run was a success, but that they are hoping to raise even more in the fight against cancer.

“We have until the middle of October to reach the $25,000 mark and I think we can do it,” Marsh said.